I grew up a Yankee fan, I favor Pitchers whenever possible, I am a stathead, and my dream job is to be a GM for an MLB franchise. In the summer, I go to MLB games and catch baseballs. In the winter, I write about what teams are doing to get better or worse. I try to be positive and unbiased in my writing, but that isn't always possible when evaluating teams truthfully.

6/28/12 White Sox at Yankees: Yankee Stadium

After taking a rare day off from baseball this week, it was back to Yankee Stadium for me. Look who I ran into at the gate:

That would be, right to left (because it will be less confusing that way):

1. George- A ballhawk who had been at the game Tuesday. Also, this would be his last game of the year, since he would be headed off to China to take part in a program, I believe the University of Bejing was putting on and would be off to St. John’s University after that.

2. Zack Hample- Just the reason I started ballhawking and this blog exists. No big deal.Also,as you can see, he is holding up a catcher’s glove. He is going to attempt a stunt today (July, 2, 2012). More specifically, he will be trying to catch a ball dropped from 1,000 feet high.
3+4. George’s friends, Stephen and Dylan. Pretty self-explanatory. I had seen these guys at a couple of other New York baseball games before, so, like George, they are “semi-regulars”
5. Mateo Fischer- The person who’s writing this sentence.

Since there were so many of us ballhawks at the gate, we split up into two groups. Zack and I went to left field, everyone else (including George’s dad, Jeff, who took the picture) went to right field. Zack took the top spot on the main left field staircase, so I took the bottom one. Therefore this was the view straight ahead of me:

and this was the view to my left:

Do you see the guy in the corner of the section? Well, he actually got a ball that was intended for me. I diagrammed the whole thing out for you in this next picture:

The player in the right part of the screen would be Freddy Garcia. Well, when he went over to the spot I marked with the number “1”, I called out to him and he threw a ball he meant to throw to me. Unfortunately, as you can see by the path of the ball I’ve outlined, his throw came up short, fell into the first row, and the man I mentioned before picked it up. Right after this, Zack said, “How does it feel to have a player throw a ball to you and miss?” He was of course referencing the game earlier that week, where the Indians’ pitching coach had overthrown him and I ended up with the ball. Oh, if only Zack knew what would happen later on in this game…

After this, Garcia made up for missing me and tossed me a second ball he retrieved:

After that, a ball was hit, and I initially judged it would land in front of me, so I ran down a few steps. I then realized it was going back to where I had been standing. (Zack had actually gone elsewhere, so I was standing in the higher spot on the staircase for this ball.) I tried to back up, but it was too late, and the ball landed in this seat:

There, a kid (not pictured) beat me to the ball. Words cannot describe how frustrated I was with myself for botching such an easy play. I didn’t show any of it, though. I’m not really one to make a scene out of my frustration. Most of the exclamations of frustration I say out loud don’t carry a necessarily connotation to them.

Anyway, I then moved over to foul ground when the White Sox started hitting. I didn’t have a White Sox shirt, so I transformed a T-Shirt that I had picked up while I was in Baltimore.I turned the T-Shirt inside-out , and the rest of what I did can be seen in this two-part picture:

A pretty nice homemade White Sox shirt, eh? Especially when you consider I made it on the train ride to Yankee Stadium.

;

Actually, though, my “White Sox gear” didn’t help me get any baseballs from the White Sox. The only ball I got was actually intended for another person. More specifically, it was intended for Zack. Here I am with the ball and Zack beneath the arrow:

Just as I thought I had been shutout by the White Sox players, I started heading back to the left field seats. I was at this point a section away from Zack and probably ten rows behind him. Just then, I saw him get Don Cooper, the White Sox’s pitching coach’s attention. I figured I might as well position myself behind Zack in case of an overthrow. Well, Cooper DID overthrow Zack. What happened next is diagrammed in this next picture:

As you can see, I’ve drawn two curved lines into the picture. The one on the left shows where the ball initially hit after Cooper released it. It hit in a row almost exactly between Zack and I. Had it stayed there, it would have been a race between Zack and I, which he as the faster one would have won. Except, the ball bounced just right on the plastic part of the chair as to send it the path of the second line, right into the row I was running in. Obviously, I picked up the ball, but I also felt *really* bad for Zack. I’ve been on the other end of some of those and it stinks, to say the least.

When I got back to left field, it had gotten a bit more crowded. This was the view to my left:

and to my right:

If you read a couple entries ago, I mentioned a guy named Eddie (or is it Eddy?). He’s the one in the upper-right part of the picture in White Sox gear.

Behind me were two other ballhawks:

Stephen had made his way over to left field (in the green), and Zack (in the White Sox gear) had come back from foul territory.

Anyway, after misjudging another ball that both Stephen AND I missed, I caught an Alexei Ramirez home run on the fly in the spot where I took the last three pictures from:

I then saw Adam Dunn’s group coming up, so I headed over to right field. It was extremely frustrating for the most part, because although he WAS hitting home runs, they were all sailing over my head into the bleachers.

While, I was there, though, I saw a player turn around to search the crowd for a fan to toss a baseball to, so I started running to the side and waving my arms around to get him to notice me. He saw me and threw me a ball through a sea of reaching arms:

He is the player with his glove covering his face. Who is “he”? I later identified the player as Jose Quintana. While I was looking him up, I found out he is actually Colombian. If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you’ll know I am actually Colombian, so it is always very special to get a ball from a Colombian player, especially a pitcher. What made it even more special was when I put that ball into my mygameballs.com account, it didn’t recognize him as a player, so I can say I was the first one on the site to get a ball from him. That’s pretty cool, in my opinion.

I then got a ball- not on the fly- hit by whoever was the “other” lefty in the group besides Adam Dunn. After which, one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen happened. I won’t diagram this for you, but here’s a picture of where it happened:

Do you see the metal bar that is going right over the “Toyota” sign? Gordon Beckham hit an opposite-field home run that hit that bar and the popped straight up in the air. I had a beat on it, but the guy in the bottom right corner of the picture dove backwards into a seat and caught the ball.

After that, I caught an Adam Dunn home run on the fly and immediately gave it away to a kid who had also been pursuing it. Both he and his father thanked me. It was a pretty nice experience. So nice, in fact, that after security kicked everyone out of the right field seats, I gave another ball away on my way to the bleachers.

Once I got to the bleachers, the White Sox had ended their session of batting practice in lieu of something much weirder:

Fielding practices in it of themselves are pretty rare before MLB games. This was even weirder because the White Sox were taking fielding practice WITHOUT ANY BASEBALLS. The coaches were hitting imaginary balls to the players, who were then executing a play. Weird.

In the bleachers, I tried to get a ball from the grounds person, and I thought there was no way I wouldn’t with so many baseballs in the bullpen:

but somehow I came up empty handed.

My next stop was the top of the batter’s eye, where I would try to get Mike Harkey to throw me a ball. Harkey is the guy standing on the bench in the bullpen:

I accomplished my mission… sort of. Harkey *did* throw me two baseballs. Unfortunately, neither was on target, so headed into the game at 6 balls.

Thanks to a friend who wasn’t going to be at the game, and gave me his ticket as a result, here’s where I sat:

Pretty nice, huh?

There I managed to get within five feet of a Mark Teixeira home run during the game:

It was caught by the person sitting next to the guy who’s standing up. Actually, the word “caught” doesn’t accurately describe the situation. Someone had the ball bounce off their chest. Then five people piled onto each other until he finally came out with the ball.

After the game, I moved over next to the bullpen to try to get a ball from bullpen coach, Juan Nieves, but he completely ignored me. While he was waiting for Mark Salas, who was still readying himself in the bullpen, and I was yelling my head off trying to get his attention; a second guy, who also looked like a bullpen catcher, looked at me. He then put down his oversized bag, unzipped it, and pulled out a ball he then threw to me. He’s the guy trailing Salas and Nieves in the following picture:

Yay, happy ending!

STATS:
• 7 Balls at this Game (5 pictured because I gave two away)

numbers 306-312:

• 90 Balls at 18 Games= 5 Balls Per Game
• 27 straight games with at least 1 Ball
• 3 straight games with at least 2 Balls
• 2 straight Games with at least 3 Balls
• 2 straight Games with at least 4 Balls
• 2 straight Games with at least 5 Balls
• 2 straight Games with at least 6 Balls
• 2 straight Games with at least 7 Balls
• 68 Balls in 18 Games at the New Yankee Stadium= 3.78 Balls Per Game
• 18 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 1 Ball
• 3 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 2 Balls
• 2 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 3 Balls
• 2 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 4 Balls
• 2 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 5 Balls
• 2 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 6 Balls
• 2 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 7 Balls
• Time Spent On Game 3:59- 10:56= 6 Hours 57 Minutes

Emma- Really? Thank you. I can guarantee that it looked like paper a few minutes after I put it on during White Sox batting practice. Only half of it was actually attached to shirt. The other half was both crumpled and blowing in the wind.

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Steel City Ballhawk
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Ballparks on a Budget
Ever want to go to a baseball game outside of your local team but don’t want to empty the bank? Alicia Barnhart’s your girl with Ballparks on a Budget. She should know how to spend wisely in going to games because, well, she’s been to them all. Just last

Dodger Blue World
Just a great blog written by dedicated Dodger super-fan Emma Amaya.

Minoring In Baseball
A blog written by the father of just a family who are all fans of the West Michigan Whitecaps who is just a great guy in general: Michael David.

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The Ballpark Guide
A MUST-read for any MiLB afficionados, or even many MLB fans. Malcolm MacMillan goes to different ballparks all over and details his visit on the blog and writes tips for anyone going to that ballpark on his website (which can be found on the blog’s homep

The Next White Sox GM
If you were a baseball mind growing up, you may have gotten a comment from an elder female family member (usually grandma) saying, “You should be the one to run the team with all the knowledge you’ve got about baseball.” Well, here’s a kid who might just

The Unbiased MLB Fan
Matt Huddleston doesn’t root for the teams; he roots for the players. I wish I could say more, but I suspect any other explanation of his blog would be a multi-centennial-word ordeal.

Three Up, Three Down
One would assume not getting into the MLB Fan Cave is a sad experience. (Well, at least I would; I’ve never been old enough to apply.) However, this group of fans turned that usually-sad experience and turned it into a great blog where there are just a sl

MLBlogs I Recommend

Observing Baseball Classics

"The Baseball" Book Review
In this entry I reviewed/summarized the entirety of the book “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches” written by Zack Hample.

10/19/10 ALCS: Yankee Stadium
Sure I had no clue how to write it, but this was my first ballhawking entry ever and my only of 2010, so it falls under the category “classic”

Ballhawk Charities 2012
Where I went over the four ballhawk charities I had heard of at the beginning of the season as a way of helping them out by getting the word out.

Case Study on Morality in Baseball
A research paper I did way back in the summer of 2010. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I wrote back then anymore, but it does add an interesting perspective to things especially in today’s steroid talk.

Collected Baseball Knick-knacks
Quite simply: pretty much everything baseball-related that I had collected and managed to keep ahold of as of November, 20, 2011.

Dissecting/Deconstructing Baseballs
I’ve taken apart several baseballs before, and it was fun, so I decided to make a video of me taking apart a baseball and adding tips for other people to do so too.

Favorite MLB Players
I did probably one of my funner videos on who my favorite players were from the present day, when I first started watching baseball, and my favorite player that I never saw play at all.

Houlihan Park Tour and Snagging Analysis
This is my high school, Fordham Prep,’s home field, which being the manager of the varsity team for three years, I spent proabably more games here than at any other baseball field. So when I returned to my high school for a day, I took a quick tour of the

Observing Baseball Trivia
See the description of the link two links above, but modify it slightly so it fits this entry’s title.

Pitching Aces in the Playoffs
My first ever “real” entry that I ever wrote back on the surplus of star pitchers in the 2010 playoffs. It was pretty good considering I knew nothing about blogging, or writing in general for that matter.

Pure Genius
This is just me explaining how the Phillies got three aces of pitchers; nothing fancy. But it was me showing my first flash of general manager mind to the world, so that’s why I like it.

Sabermetrics (the explanation)
This was me explaining some simple sabermetric statistics for the people of the world who have heard of the stats but never really knew what significance they had/have over the more common metrics. I take pride in this because it can potentially educate s

Survey of Adults Perception of Baseball
I surveyed a bunch of my teacher as to which baseball player was there favorite; both in and outside of New York. It’s a bit more complex than that, but the only way to understand is to read the entry.

Tour Target Field in the Snow
Target Field is in Minnesota, so it only felt fitting that I should take at least one day to tour it while it was buried in the snow. And that’s what this entry was: a video of me going around Target Field while it was snowing and there was a ton of snow

Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records
I may yet do this every year…and it would then become its own link category–but for the meantime–there is only one set of Observing Baseball Facts and Records, so it definitely goes under “Observing Baseball Classics”.

Blast from the Baseball Past

8/24/08 Dodgers at Phillies: Citizens Bank Park
My second ever game to CBP that ended with Pedro Feliz hitting a three-run walk-off home run while my dad and I were in the car because we had to catch a flight to Detroit seven hours later that same day in New York.

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